


A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Future Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A milestone request for Camilladilla @ tumblr. She wanted reincarnated m!Hawke and Anders, and this was what resulted. <i>Some sign of the last Blight remained in Lothering: a black scorch on an old rock, the rotten stump of a tree, or a genlock skeleton in an old cave, little more than a cage of warped, brown ribs buried in the dirt, fingers still clutching a rusted blade. The bones were so brittle and so ancient they crumbled if you breathed on them, but no one still living told stories about that Blight anymore. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW

_Ten years, a hundred years from now, someone like me will love someone like you, and there will be no templars to tear them apart._

Some sign of the last Blight remained in Lothering: a black scorch on an old rock, the rotten stump of a tree, or a genlock skeleton in an old cave, little more than a cage of warped, brown ribs buried in the dirt, fingers still clutching a rusted blade. The bones were so brittle and so ancient they crumbled if you breathed on them, but no one still living told stories about that Blight anymore.

Garrett was only passing through. He offered his services to the farmstead that needed them most, chopping wood near the vegetable garden, the handle of the axe rubbing blisters pink and raw into his palm. He was used to holding a sword, those blisters long since hardened into callus, but the grip was different, and his hands sweaty, and the noonday sun in Fereldan a tricky detail, one that couldn’t be ignored. He stopped often to wipe the sweat from his brow with the handkerchief his mother had given him—his mother Leandra, named after his great-grandmother, though she didn’t look anything like the portraits—and by the time he was done the red fabric was stained darker than any of the cutpurse blood he’d spilled along the way.

Supper that night was hearty Fereldan fare, a soup so thick it would have been called _stew_ in any other part of Thedas, and fresh bread and cold water and warm ale. The family didn’t remind Garrett at all of his own, but they didn’t have to, rosy-cheeked children underfoot all the time, and Garrett assuring their mother _No, it’s all right_ and _No, of course I don’t mind_ and _Yes, they are a handful, aren’t they?_

He’d be fine in the barn, he insisted, even though the roof needed mending; they only allowed it because it was summer, hot even at night, and because he told them he preferred sleeping under the stars, which wasn’t necessarily true. Any man who said he didn’t prefer sleeping in a bed—a real one, with its very own pillow—was a liar, or he wasn’t worth getting to know. He certainly wasn’t the sort of man Garrett wanted to live with, much less face every morning in calm lake or dirty mirror.

But at night, watching the dark sky cloud over, he learned that Lothering was smaller than he thought it would be. It was smaller than grandmother Bethany’s stories made it seem when he was settled in sleepy at her side, her fingers smelling of elfroot lacing gentle through his hair.

Rough cotton blanket pulled up all the way up to his chin, finger poking a moth-hole idly, he tried to trace the paths of the stars, until at last he fell asleep, and woke with a crick in his neck, not to mention blisters broken open and bleeding across his palm.

At breakfast, eating his apple and cheese left-handed and not without some difficulty, the eldest daughter of the house said she helped some afternoons with a healer in the marketplace, who made a fair living off working harvest-time incidents alone.

‘I’m no good at it myself,’ she explained, ‘not a mage, anyway, but I can hold a man steady, keep him from kicking _or_ biting when the pain’s too much. Help set a few broken bones, too, or hold ‘em when they faint.’

‘Not necessary,’ Garrett insisted. He held up his hand to ward her off, but it was the wrong hand, blood spotting the flesh, not at all convincing; he grinned, while the girl crossed her arms over her chest and refused to buy any of it. ‘I’m used to pain, what with being a big, strong warrior and all.’

‘Them’s the ones that tend to faint first,’ the girl said. ‘And you’re coming, else my mother’ll have my hide.’

Lothering wasn’t any bigger in the sunlight on the second day—even smaller, in fact, if that were possible—just a narrow bazaar with unimpressive wares, leather vambraces and rough-hewn trinkets and a potions stand, though one dwarf had an ogre’s skull set right into the front of his stall, bleached white and polished thin by time.

‘My great-uncle was killed by an ogre,’ Garrett said casually.

The girl snorted. ‘Whose _wasn’t_ , round these parts?’

Garrett knew he shouldn’t want to impress her, but at the same time, it stung to know he really didn’t—even if those were always the explicit terms of being a hire-sword, that he was no more important in a mud-and-water town like this one than he would be in a big city like Denerim. It kept a man grounded, kept his head clear and his ego smaller than his muscles, or his weapon. Sometimes, that was all he needed to keep on living, or at least to be slightly less awful about the whole affair.

He’d weathered worse with the promise of less before, but that was the thing about wounds, and he didn’t precisely mind the fussing. _That_ reminded him of home, more than anything else. When he wrote to mother next, he’d never tell her how much he enjoyed it: being bossed onto a stool and left alone in the back room of some busy healer’s establishment, crammed between a spotty adolescent sparking miniature arcane firestorms in his cupped hands, and a snoring drunk with a gash on his head, which eventually lolled to rest and bleed on Garrett’s broad shoulder.

No; she’d be far too smug about it.

He was rubbing the crick in his neck when the healer appeared, pale hair and dark eyes, covering a yawn with the palm of one freckled hand. When Garrett grinned at him—no reason he couldn’t be polite—the man leaned in the doorway, easing a crick in his back.

‘By all means, take your time,’ Garrett said. ‘I even made a new friend while I was waiting—I’ll carry the stains he’s left on my person with me always—and this lad seems weather-bent on setting _some_ delicate part of my anatomy on fire.’

‘Swordsmen.’ The healer sighed in return, just the faintest of laugh-lines forming at the corners of his eyes. ‘You’re all the same. One _tiny_ scrape, and suddenly you need a healer.’

‘And also,’ Garrett added, ‘we have no idea how to chop wood without injuring ourselves.’

‘At least that’s one thing we all have in common,’ the healer agreed.

*

With Garrett’s wounds mended, they shared two glasses of Antivan brandy—for the pain, the healer offered, and Garrett readily accepted, and pretended not to notice the way the healer stared at him, because was used to that, even more than mosquitoes in the summer or chilblains in winter. It came with the name. It came with the territory, with the heritage, with all the history he couldn’t quite escape, even this far into the mostly indifferent Fereldan countryside.

‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘I remind you of someone.’

‘No,’ the healer replied, setting his chin in his hand in a half-familiar gesture of interest. ‘But your smile does, anyway.’

 **END**


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